The gipsy boy said to her—
“If I were you I should watch for my husband all day. I would weave my mats in the doorway, and look up the road both ways, from morn till night, otherwise your husband will come back and go past the cottage and you will never know.” So she took her loom and sat by the roadway, and watched, and looked over the hill and to right and left for whoever might come. And often the gipsy boy would watch too, and look from the other side of the cottage while the potter’s wife sat in the front. One day the gipsy boy ran round to her and said, “There is someone coming up the road who will come here, but it is not your husband. It is my father, and he will want to take me away, and he will beat me as he did my mother. And if he gets hold of the cup that my mother made for you, he knows all her charms, and he can undo what she did, and perhaps can throw some evil spell on us all, so that your husband will never return again. So the best thing will be for you to give me the cup and let me hide myself with it, and then you must tell him that you do not know where I am, and if he asks, tell him that the cup is gone; and when he is gone I will come back again, but promise that you will not give me up to him.”
So the potter’s wife promised that she would never give up the little boy, and she bid him take the cup and run quickly and hide himself, and then she took her little girl by the hand and sat and waited for the gipsy man to come, though she trembled with fear, and wished him far away.
Presently the gipsy man came up to the front of the cottage where the potter’s wife sat, and bid her good day.
“I was here before,” he said. “And you gave me something to eat and drink. Is your husband come back, for he was away then?”
“My husband is away still,” she said. “But soon I hope he will be here.”
Then the gipsy took up one of her mats which lay on the ground beside her, and looked at it.
“You are clever with your loom,” he said; “but what do you mean by the little verse you put on all these mats?”
“It is a little verse which can but be rightly read by one person,” she answered; “and if he sees it, it will not matter whether others understand it or no.”
“And have you been here all alone since I came by?” asked the gipsy; “have no other gipsies been past? for I want to join some of my own people, and perhaps you can tell me which way they are gone.”
“One came not so long ago,” answered the potter’s wife, “but she was so tired with tramping far that she could go no further. So she has stayed, and rests in the churchyard. She was a gipsy woman with red beads and coins in her hair. And I kept her and let her die in peace, and wrapped her in a cloth of white and gold.”
“And did she do nothing while she rested here?” asked the gipsy man. “Did she make you no present to pay you for your trouble?”
“She made me a present which paid me for my trouble well,” said the woman, “though it was only a little cup of clay that was grey and wet. And she gave me this ring, and bid me give it to her husband if he came by here, and tell him that it was useless for him to seek her further.”
The gipsy man looked at the ring she held out to him, and he turned pale, and knit his brows.
“And where is that cup?” he asked; “and where is her little boy? For I will take him with me into the world.”
“I don’t know where he is gone,” said the potter’s wife; “as for the cup, he took it with him when he went.”
Meantime the gipsy boy had hidden in a haystack quite close to the cottage, from where he could see the roadways all round, and he looked to right and left for who should pass, for he was still half afraid that his father might come and search for him, and take him away by force. As he lay and watched he saw a man coming over the hill, who looked spent and tired, as if he had walked far. He seemed to know the path well, and he came straight to the cottage, but he did not come in, but waited near as if he wanted to see who was there. Then the gipsy boy said to himself—
“Perhaps this is the potter himself, whom she has been looking for all this time.” So he slid down and ran to the man and began to pretend to beg.
The man looked at him and said—
“You are a gipsy’s child. Where do you come from? Are you living under a hedge, or do you come from a gipsy’s camp near?”
“It is true I am a gipsy’s child,” answered the boy, “but I am living under no hedge, but in that little cottage, for the woman who lives there keeps me for love of my mother, who helped her when she was in trouble.”
“And what did your mother do for the woman?” asked the man, who was no other than the potter. “It must have been a great service, that she should be willing to take you and keep you.”
“She saved her from an evil charm that had been cast upon her,” answered the boy, “and taught her to love her husband again, and
